rror correction mechanisms rror correction mechanisms Error correction mechanisms are common in biology and widely thought of as endemic to that realm to the exclusion of the quantum. However, the evidence would seem to side with error correction mechanisms being very much a part of the atom and having been part of the quantum world since the beginning of time. If anything, the biological would appear to be a younger sibling to, derivative from, and homologous with the quantum insofar at the attributes of error correction mechanisms are concerned.
Showing their degree of efficiency, Lesli Orgel writes that: "DNA polymerases make use of elaborate error-correction mechanisms that may cut the error rate to below 10-8."1 Of another occurrence of biological correction mechanisms, von Neumann wrote:
It is easy to note that the number of nerve actuation's which occur in a normal lifetime must be of the order of 1020. Obviously, during this chain of events, there never occurs a malfunction which cannot be corrected by the organism itself, without any significant outside intervention. The system must, therefore, contain the necessary arrangements to diagnose errors as they occur, to readjust the organism so as to minimize the effects of errors.2
While the above concerns the biological organism, it would appear that error- correction mechanism's exist below them: i.e. within individual atoms. The following example of particle accelerators lends itself to this understanding. Describing the difficulty of getting particles to collide, Leon Lederman writes: "It is as hard as having two machine guns shoot at each other and have the bullets collide in mid-air. This gives you some idea of the challenge of operating a colliding-beam accelerator." Particles are accelerated in doughnut shaped vacuum chambers being pulled by magnets placed along the chambers. The Fermilab in Chicago is four miles long and antiprotons circle it 100 million times per second.
Since the transits are so long, extremely small disturbances and magnetic imperfections can drive a particle away from the ideal orbit. Soon we have no beam. So we must provide conditions for stable acceleration ... Strong focusing involves shaping the magnetic fields that guide the particles so that they are held much closer to an ideal orbit.3
And even below the atomic level, at the subatomic level, a human body is not expected to loose more than only about a single proton due to decay in a person's entire lifetime. Lederman, writes:
The decay of a proton would be a spectacular event. To catch a proton decay, modern scientists have ... placed huge, clear plastic containers of pure water, about 10,000 tons worth, in cubes about 70 feet on each side ... into a salt mine under Lake Erie in Ohio, into a lead mine under Mount Toyama in Japan, and into the Mont Blanc tunnel that connects France and Italy ... So far no proton decays have been observed.4
Protons appear to reside in shells a specific distance from the nuclear center based upon a given ones individual placement. Eugene Wigner, Maria Mayer, and Johannes Jensen received the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics for showing: "that the protons and neutrons of the nucleus are arranged into concentric shells."5 In atoms, nuclear particles move at relativistic speeds. It is nuclear forces that balance centrifugal against centripetal forces keeping nucleons from either flying off or spiralling downwards. In atoms: "What (electron) wave functions do ... is to in effect push the particles around, to guide them, as it were, along their proper courses."6 And Atkins writes of a "corrective" force that prevent "errors" within the atom from even happening. "Though the Bohr model of the atom became obsolete," he writes:
The energies it predicts agree exactly with those obtained by the Schrödinger equation. In the Bohr atom an electron travels around the nucleus. The Coulombic force of attraction is balanced by the centrifugal effect of the orbital motion.7
The atomic error correction mechanism is found in the delicate balance maintained down to the level of nanometers – a level of control only few if any humans will ever master. What we find is that atomic forces do indeed work as error correction mechanisms and in effect function in a manner as gargantuan manmade particle accelerators do (or – uncannily – vice versa). Where it is the electromagnetic force mediating between the protons of the nucleus and electrons of the shells – counter-balanced against the nuclear force – subatomic particles maintain their delicate orbits. So exact are these mechanisms that protons not destroyed through cataclysmic events such as supernovas have existed virtually unchanged since the big bang. Error correction mechanisms, then, evidently must reside within nucleons monitoring the behavior of quarks.
We would conclude that the error correction mechanisms found in biological organisms are pre-dated by their occurrence in quantum sources and the maintenance of error correction mechanisms in the machinery below the biological even permits them to function and to exist. We would say that error correction mechanisms cannot be used as an example of a life feature that shows a level of organization not found in the physical. And, the chance remains that it may yet be shown how physical features transform into macro. (Please refer to a distantly related paper: click).
Bibliography supplied on request
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